


Things my heart used to know

by spock (daisyridley)



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anastasia AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, IN SPACE, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-07 20:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14089308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisyridley/pseuds/spock
Summary: When an uprising seizes Vulcan, a young Spock tries to flee the planet but is knocked unconscious and loses his memory. Ten years later, two humans come up with the perfect plan to scam the only survivor of the S'chn T'gai clan.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. this fic toys around with canon a lot. What you need to know is this: Vulcans and Romulans originally were all Vulcans, and became two distinct peoples when some of these Vulcans rejected the teachings of Surak. There was a war, in which these people called themselves "those who walk under the Raptor's wings," and when they lost they fled to another planet. In canon, the common origin has been forgotten. Here, these events only happened a few hundred years before. However it is still set around the 23rd century for other reasons, first of all the fact that Earth and Vulcan have already established diplomatic relations and alla that.  
> 2\. you can thank Ren (@neetols/dingonato on tumblr) for coming up with this idea and supporting me through the writing part and drawing the wonderful art that will be scattered through the fic. love you fam. also thank Kora @LieutenantSaavik for beta'ing!

 

Red sand twirled across the planes of Vulcan. Spock stood at the mosaicked window, staring at the setting sun. He observed the way sunlight frayed on his eyelashes, turning yellow and green and orange.

South, the city of ShiKahr stretched over the horizon. North, the palace rested against the slopes of the mountain, merged with it in its inner rooms, turning caves into halls.

From where he was standing, Spock couldn’t see his lodgings. To a ten year old, the Vulcan High Command compound was immense.

People were gathering in the main hall. Their heat pooled at Spock’s shoulders, but he adamantly didn’t look back. He should have rejoined with his father and engaged in conversation with the others, but nobody ever minded if Sarek’s youngest son were a little weird, a little dull. He was a human child, after all; that was what they said as they bent their heads and looked at Spock with grave contempt.

Tonight, Vulcan was celebrating the 300-year anniversary of the Great Awakening. Spock’s mother had told him that Vulcans hadn’t always been so tight-lipped, but he wasn’t sure how that could be possible. The people talking in hushed voices behind him were governors, professors at the Vulcan Science Academy, Masters of Gol, the greatest minds in the world all gathered in its capital to celebrate. They paraded in the salon in black robes. They seldom blinked.

Spock wasn’t sure what to make of them. They thought his mind was frail.

He became aware of a presence standing still behind him, and he turned.

“Grandmother,” he greeted, careful not to show surprise. To the others in the room, emotional suppression was easy, but Spock’s mother had been human.

T’Pau was a Master of Gol. She, too, was dressed in black robes, and she was also wise beyond mistake, and impassible. But her love for her offspring filtered through her dark eyes and reverberated through her voice, as warm as the Vulcan dunes.

“Spock. The sun has set; why dost thou look at the horizon?”

He turned back at the window, and saw from its reflection that she was looking outside too.

“I am contemplating it, grandmother.” He frowned. “I believe that is not an irrational thing to do - is it, grandma?”

“It is not.”

She joined him at his side. They stood and contemplated together.

“I am leaving, my dear,” she said then.

“Why? Where are you going?”

She did not admonish him for his frantic tone. “I will be spending some time in Paris, on Earth. I have been on Vulcan too long and have become indolent.”

“May I come with you?”

He had never been allowed out of Vulcan, but surely it must be logical to cherish one’s origins.

“One day, thou will. But for now thou must stay here, and thou must grow wise in the teachings of Surak.”

He nodded. There was no point in arguing.

“Now,” she said. “Look.”

From her black robes’ wide pockets she pulled out a small box, decorated in gold and turquoise, and handed it to him; then she brought a hand to her clavicles and slipped a golden chain off her neck.

“Here,” she said. “Bring it close to the box.”

She dangled the chain on Spock’s hand, careful not to touch his palm.

The pendant was a green round disk, as big as his thumb. He turned it over in his hands, then did as she’d instructed.

The box lid opened, and a frail tune expanded through the air. They bowed their heads to listen closely. Spock closed his eyes and listened, content, to the lyre melody.

“Our lullaby,” T’Pau said. “As thou know, sounds solicits memory. When thou play it, think of an old woman who loves thee very much.”

“Is love logical, grandma?”

“In its purest form, it is.”

A loud bang startled them. The doors of the hall had burst open, causing an outbreak. People’s hands went to the phasers at their belts, but they did nothing more than assess the situation and regard the intruder with alert curiosity. He strode in the room in full battle gear, colossal. His metal armor boiled under the lights.

“ _Sarek!_ ” he shouted. “ _Sarek!_ ”

He singled out Spock’s father and marched toward him, double his size, enraged where Sarek was impassible.

“Nero,” Sarek observed calmly.

“ _Destroyed!_ Where were you, Vulcan, when my planet burned? Where were your promises?”

“I regret being unable to intervene in time.”

“Lies! You stood here and watched and you didn’t care!”

“As I said, I regret--”

“Your regret won’t save you! Mark my words, murderer.” He straightened his spine and pointed his finger all around himself. “Everyone, mark my words. You look down at your own people from the height of your palaces and you masturbate to the thought of your own intellect, but you will soon face the consequences of your inertia, and your logic will not save you. Those who march beneath the Raptor’s wings will be above you, and you will not cast us away like your ancestors did; not anymore. We will claim the freedom that has always been ours. And you, Sarek, you will pay for your deceit--”

“I have done all I could to help your people, Nero.”

“You did nothing when I was on my knees, pleading you! And I will not rest, murderer! I will not rest until every member of your family has suffered the same fate as my people!”

Before anyone could reach him, he ran to the mosaicked window and jumped out.

Spock looked at the broken glass on the floor.

“The empty laments of a fool enraptured by his own emotion,” the Masters of Gol decided with amused scorn, and the matter was closed for the night. But from the height of their intellect they did not realize that Vulcan had been stirring, once again questioning Surak’s teachings. Last time it had happened, those who didn’t accept them had fled to the planet Romulus, or died. Now that Romulus was destroyed, the survivors were hellbent, and those who marched beneath the Raptor’s wings were rising from the ashes of Vulcan.

 

It took them a fortnight to throw themselves at the gates of the Vulcan High Command, savagely laughing, shooting deadly rays. They uprooted the doors and moved to take control of the palace as the whole city of ShiKahr descended into chaos.

Spock was in the library, spending time with his grandmother before her departure. She was planning to leave for Paris in two days.

He ran to the windows when the uprising began, and he, morbidly captivated, watched people fight in the courtyard before T’Pau pulled him away with her and fled through the stainless corridors. He heard noises he’d never forget as long as he lived. She pulled at his sleeve, hauled him, sprinting to reach one of the side exists before the rebels occupied them, too. Her fingers hurt his wrist. She must have felt every one of his emotions through their touch, but she did not let go.

The laser lights he’d seen in the courtyard were still burning his eyes, splintered on his eyelashes.

“Grandma, wait!” He tugged back, extricating from her grasp, and he dodged her when she tried to grab him again. “My music box!”

When Spock and his father spent time in ShiKahr, they were accommodated in the High Command compound. His father’s quarters weren’t far, and he didn’t want to part from her gift. If everybody else was busy fighting in the main halls, they still had time. Surely, a minute wouldn’t make any difference.

“Spock, no!”

But he was already running back into the maze of corridors and up the stairs, T’Pau at his heels.

Voices were pouring closer.

He’d left the box in a cabinet in his father’s drawer, and there it was, still and breakable. When T’Pau reached him in the office, she closed the door behind her shoulders and barricaded it with strong arms and trembling hands. They were locked inside.

Outside, there were footsteps. People thumped at the door.

T’Pau put a finger on her lips. She never blinked, never flinched when the thuds shook her barricade. From the wall opposite her, Sarek watched them from a painting. Spock did not know where his father really was.

T’Pau scanned the room in search for an exit, but the only other door led to Spock and Sarek’s chamber, and jumping from the window would mean meeting certain death on the side of the mountain.

A voice whispered, “This way!”

It had come from the extinct fireplace. A boy emerged from the decorative screen. There was a smear of blood on his shirt, but it didn’t look like it belonged to him.

“Come on, there’s a way out! I’ll cover for you!”

T’Pau surged Spock forward and the music box fell of his hands. When he turned to recover it, the boy pushed him into the hole and Spock was forced to duck into the passage with his grandmother as the boy closed the entrance behind him. Spock saw that he was scared. But there was nothing to do anymore. He turned around, and he went on.

He went on and on and on. The tunnel was silent.

When they emerged at the sloped of the mountain, people around them were running in every direction, crashing into each other. T’Pau grabbed Spock’s wrist once again, and she headed toward the rioting city, where turmoil huddled. She never stopped. He didn’t know where she was taking him until he saw the ships wafting over the docks in a cluster and then taking off.

People flocked to the station, tugging and pulling at each other’s clothes as they climbed onto emergency shuttles. They knocked into Spock, and he felt as if his arm were being dislocated. He couldn’t see anything but a mass of bodies in the dark. Up, the sharp lights of the docks illuminated their hair.

T’Pau’s grip on his wrist faltered and failed, but he kept running after her, even as he was crushed and shunted in every direction. She climbed onto a ship just as the hatchet was closing, and he was just behind her, and then someone knocked him to the floor and he lost her, and she screamed his name but he couldn’t get up, and he tried even though he couldn’t see her anymore, until somebody stepped on him and knocked him unconscious, leaving him there on the ground.


	2. Chapter 1

Jim’s contact was waiting for him at an intersection right outside the station, buried in his heavy coat. The station was almost deserted these days, but in all the years they’d been doing business together, Jim had learnt how to spot him in the blink of an eye even through the swarm of people that flocked the streets at nightfall. He was pretty sure he’d never seen more than the tips of the Vulcan’s fingers whenever he dealt with him - the other times didn’t count and, besides, the guy was always shivering the whole time. The Vulcan still hadn’t seen him, and Jim stopped and lolled for a moment, knowing he’d grown sentimental.

When he passed in front of him, they didn’t speak; Jim kept walking, eyes up front, and the guy peeled from the wall and followed his steps to the back of the docks, where steam blurred the edges of the narrowing streets.

When he reached a safe alley, Jim halted. He waited for the other guy to catch up and looked up at the purpling sky. He’d be up there soon, out of this hell, and away from any other for good.

It was the Vulcan’s turn to surpass him, with a tilt of his head this time. He leaned on the wall next to him, ankles crossed. He looked up too, curious, but he didn’t catch what Jim was looking at.

“Do you have everything?” he asked.

“Sure thing. How about you?”

The Vulcan digged in his coat pockets and flashed a transparent card between his fingers. Jim smirked. In return, he showed him the small carton box he kept in his jacket pocket.

“Pharmaceuticals fresh out of the Terran Embassy.”

He tossed the box at the Vulcan, who stumbled to grasp it and glared at him. He threw Jim the card with a sharp movement.

“You smuggling out a Vulcan or pretending to be one?” he teased, nodding at the Vulcan travel card that was now clutched in his palm.

“Haven’t you heard about the auditions?”

“Then that really is your plan. I did not believe the rumor to be serious.”

“Well, let us hope your friends did, because we’re following through with that plan.”

Jim looked through the transparent counterfeit card, admiring its iridescence against the fumes in the alley. “I’d say I’ll let you know how it goes, but I’ll be aboard a ship to Earth before I can do that. You’ll have to find another dealer.”

“We’ll see,” the Vulcan replied. He pushed himself away from the wall, put his hands back in his pockets and buried his face deeper in the maroon coat. He looked at Jim.

“You free now?”

Jim, set in motion by his words, fixed his jacket and ruffled his hair.

“Not tonight. My brother’s waiting for me.”

“Then I guess I will only see you if your plan to find Spock fails.”

“Probably, yeah.” He glanced at the Vulcan, uncertain. He’d dealt this guy everything he and Bones could get their hands on, and he’d helped more than one of his friends get out of ShiKahr, out of the planet, disguised as diplomats, businessmen, even humans if they were desperate enough to undergo an intervention. And, of course, he’d fooled around with him more than a couple of times. But they always knew their acquaintance was temporary.

With one last nod, he left the Vulcan in the alley and walked away.

He slithered through the crowd down the main streets, careful not to touch anyone. He kept his head down, but he was humming a melody. The Vulcan travel card, the last piece of his puzzle, was safe in his waistcoat. Now he just needed a guy who looked like S’chn T’gai Spock.

Bones was waiting for him in a coffee house, sitting at the wooden counter with a drink at his left and a padd at his right. He was skimming through his notes with bored fingers while, behind him, a group of five or six Vulcans were debating over a worn-out book. They were all around a table, rising from their armchairs as the discussion became animated. Bones looked like he was trying to ignore them and wasn’t entirely succeeding.

“About damn time,” he scoffed when Jim slid on a chair next to him. “All done?”

Jim patted his jacket. “All done, old man. Ready to go?”

Bones downed his drink and knocked the glass on the counter. “Let’s go.”

They were holding the auditions in a warehouse in the industrial area of the city. Jim had to pull a lot of strings to make sure it would be empty and unguarded tonight, but in the end he even managed to get a fake-ass permit that said they were holding an independent play competition, an innocuous activity that would have been frowned upon in the old days of Vulcan but that didn’t get more than a good-tempered eye roll now.

The planet had changed a lot since the revolution. It seemed to Jim that people tried to go against their own nature just to prove they weren’t followers of Surak. The situation would water down, eventually, find a balance between schematism and chaos, but it hadn’t been long enough.

Over the last few days, they’d set up a stage in the warehouse so that the competition excuse would hold in the chance of an inspection. Tonight was the culmination of weeks, months even, of preparation. Jim had been spreading the word for ages.

It paid off: the turnout was even higher than expected. Jim rubbed his hands together and flashed Bones a conspiratorial grin when he saw the herd of young, dark haired Vulcans crammed up against the warehouse walls. He stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, and called in the first guy.

“Your name,” Bones ordered when the boy had climbed on the stage. His eyes were a little too round, but he could still do.”

“Az’ir-vaikar.”

“Wrong. It’s Spock,” Bones said, still writing the real name down on an ordinary piece of paper they’d chosen for secrecy over Bones’ padd. “Alright, kid, amaze us.”

He didn’t amaze them. Bones stroke a line over his name and called for the next one.

“What’s your name?”

“Spock.”

“Better. And your real name?”

“Spock?” the guy stammered, expecting a trick.

“No, you dumb fuck; I’ve got to write your actual name down.”

“Oh. Nei Arev-rahm.”

“I swear to fuck,” Bones muttered, and Jim decided to take the situation into his hands.

“Alright, Nei,” he said with a smile, sitting properly on his chair to show that he was listening. “Show us what you’ve got.”

He didn’t have much.

Nor did the third guy, nor the fourth, nor the fiftieth. Jim was losing his mind, and Bones seemed to have simply lost his will to stay awake.

After a candidate swept on stage shouting, “Grandma, it’s me! Spock!” Jim’s eyes begged to leave their orbits.

“Oh, bother.”

“Didn’t you get the memo where we said that Spock was a quiet boy?” Bones asked, exasperated. “A quiet, reserved boy!”

“It’s been a decade, dude. Can’t a guy change?” the actor protested.

“Not-- not if we want him to be recognizable! Next.”

Nobody answered. Cold water running down his spine, Jim turned around. The warehouse had emptied. He met Bones’ eyes.

They sat still, frozen. Waiting for someone else to turn up - a deus ex machina to save them at the last moment. The passports weighed in Jim’s waistcoat.

Bones got up, mechanic. Jim mirrored him. They gathered their bags and their jackets and their mugs and the stacks of paper with all the names crossed out, Nirak and Rehr-kan and Tehk-natya and no goddamn Spock.

“I’ll walk you home,” Bones said.

“Don’t you have to go back to the Embassy?”

“I got a free night. In case I never had to go back again.”

Jim puffed his cheeks and pushed his hands into his pockets. “Come on, I got something to eat for both of us.”

They headed, quiet, to the old palace, where nobody had set foot since the uprising as if the souls of the murdered still infested the place. Jim had never got back to the quarters he used to occupy with his father, if not to retrieve his clothes and books; but there were plenty of beds to reclaim once the palace had emptied, rooms full of trinkets of a civilization passed.

They flopped on rigid armchairs and Jim slid down, pursuing his lips and looking at the ceiling. As high as it was, it wasn’t the coveted sky.

“I’m getting dinner now,” he said. “I just have to close my eyes a sec. Then we’re back in business, brother. We’ve got to plan something else.” He would force himself to get up in just a moment; now, he couldn’t quite find the strength to do so.

Bones huffed. “This is it, Jim. Game over. Our last credits gone for a flea-infested warehouse, and still no guy to pretend to be Spock.”

“We’ll find him, Bones,” Jim said. His friend’s pessimism did nothing but fuel his stubbornness. “He’s here somewhere, right under our noses. One look at that jewellery box, and T’Pau will think we have her real grandson.” He nodded at the box he’d stored on one of the drawers since the night he’d revived and found himself holding it. It had sat on the corners of his eyes for years, until finally his brilliant plan surfaced his mind.

He tensed - he’d just heard something. If the place wasn’t infested with ghosts, that was somebody’s voice.

“Did you hear that?”

“No.”

He raised a finger and Bones sharpened his ears, circumspect.

Someone was humming. Jim’s raised finger pointed to the drawer, where they stored their phasers. They scampered, catlike, to get them.

When they moved to the corridor, they saw nobody, but they still heard singing. Jim went first, sliding down the wall on his tiptoes. His forehead wrinkled in the effort to pinpoint the source of the sound. When he turned around a corner, he found it: a lean shadow in the darkness.

“What are you doin’ here?” Bones shouted.

The figure snapped and bolted into one of the rooms.

“Stop!”

Jim and Bones ran after it, phasers still raised. The intruder had sought cover into one of the private quarters, and was now trapped inside. When they reached him he was standing against a wall, eyes and nostrils widening in fear but otherwise composed.

He was Vulcan, about Jim’s age and tall and sharp, with black hair flopping down his forehead and dark eyes staring right at him. Jim gulped.

He broke away from his stare only to find himself looking at the painting right behind him. It depicted Sarek’s family with excruciating accuracy.

They’d ended up in Spock’s old rooms. And this intruder - his traits were harsher, an adult’s, but he had the same cheekbones, the same shadows under his pointed eyebrows, the same bridge of his nose and the same eyes.

“Now, hold on, kid--”

“Bones. Bones.” He turned to his friend, patting him repeatedly on the forearm to shut him up, and whispered: “Do you see what I see?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Jim glanced at the painting, maybe a little too conspicuously, but Bones got the message.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, awestruck.

“Are you Jim?” the intruder asked. He was frowning, now that they’d both lowered their phasers and didn’t look that threatening anymore.

“Depends on who’s looking for him.”

“My name is Selek. I need a travel card. They say you’re the man to see, but I cannot tell you who said that,” he informed them with a grave nod. “And what… may I ask why you’re circling me? Were you a vulture in another life?”

Jim’s lips twitched. “I’m sorry, Serek.”

“Selek.”

“Selek. It’s just that you look an awful lot like… nevermind. Now, you said something about a travel card?”

“Yes. I would like to go to Paris, on Earth.”

“You’d like to go to Paris?”

Jim allowed himself another glance at the painting, just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. The young Spock in the painting eluded his eyes, and seemed in fact to be looking at the very fireplace Jim had pushed him in, all those years before.

A dog-sized bear ran under Bones’ leg, and he had to cling to the door jamb not to fall on his ass while the Selhat rubbed on Selek’s legs. Jim bent on his knees to pet it.

“Look, Bones, he likes me!”

“What’s that?” Bones asked.

“This is I-Chaya. I adopted him on my way to the city.”

Busy petting Selek’s creature, Jim had forgotten the situation for a moment. Now he got up, dusting off his trousers.

“Let me ask you something… Selek, isn’t it? Now, is there a last name that goes with that?”

The guy straightened his spine the way Jim did when he was tense. “Actually… I will perfectly understand if you chose not to believe me, as I’m aware that my story sounds quite unbelievable. The fact is, I don’t know my last name. I was found wandering around when I was about ten years old and consigned to an orphanage.”

Jim frowned. “And before that? Before you were ten years old?”

“I’m aware that this is strange, but I do not remember. I have very few memories of my past.”

Jim turned to Bones with a shit-eating grin. _Can you believe_ , he mouthed, but not for the reason Selek would have guessed.

“I do remember something, however.”

He looked back at him. “And what do you remember?”

“Paris.”

“And that’s why you’d like to go to Paris.”

“Right. So, can you do something about the travel cards or should I seek someone else’s help?”

Jim regarded Selek with an amiable smile. He tried to put an arm around his shoulders, but the guy ducked away and he didn’t push it.

“Well, Selek, let me tell you how it goes. Bones here works at the Terran Embassy, and as a side job he… provides medical assistance to those in need. Let’s say. And I, I provide a way to get out of this place whether you’re human, Vulcan or Mantillian, and I do so by knowing every efficient smuggler in this city, so that if I can’t forge someone’s passport, I sure know who can. That’s why we didn’t rat each other out when we met, actually. And we’ve helped loads of people over the years, but unless they’re in grave danger we usually ask for something in return. Not credits, of course, but… other things that might be useful. And I’m not sure you have anything beside the clothes you’re wearing, which are not exactly my style.”

“You could have just said you can’t help me.”

“No, but, you see, the funny thing is, technically I could. In fact, oddly enough, we’re going to Paris ourselves. And I’ve just got three tickets out of here. Unfortunately, the third one is for him.”

He pointed at the painting.

“Spock. We’re going to reunite him with his grandmother T’Pau.”

“You know, Jim, this guy kinda looks like him,” Bones said.

Jim winked at him to thank him for the cue. “Well, now that you mention it… the same smart eyes.”

“Sarek’s eyes.”

“Amanda’s bottom lip.”

“Look at her, in the painting.”

“He’s the same age, the same physical type.” With dramatic flair, he examined Selek’s build. He regretted poking at his side when he found muscles under his sack of clothes.

“Are you trying to tell me that you think I am Spock?”

Jim crossed his hands behind his back and looked at Selek under his eyelashes. “I’ve seen thousand of men all over the city--”

“In various states of undress,” Bones added.

“None of them looks as much like Spock as you. Just look at the portrait, and tell me you don’t see it.”

Selek straightened his vest and refused to meet his eyes. “I knew you were odd. Now, you just sound insane to me. If you’ll excuse me, I must go look for another criminal.”

He tried to walk away, but Bones blocked his way out, by planting himself in the middle of the doorway and crossing his arms. Jim knew that Vulcans knew a couple of ways to render guys tougher than Bones completely useless, but his friend had something menacing in his posture that had made people stronger than Selek falter.

“Why the hell would that be so weird?” Bones asked. “You don’t even remember what happened to you. Nobody knows what happened to him. You’re looking for your family in Paris and his only family is in Paris. Excuse _me_ , princess, but that really doesn’t sound as stupid as you think it is.”

“Well,” Selek stuttered. “Perhaps I was too quick in my judgement. I suppose it is hard to imagine myself living in a palace like this when I’ve slept on a dusty floor my entire life. I apologize for insulting you.” He’d turned back to look at the painting, and seemed to be trying to catch his lookalike’s eyes, the way Jim always found himself trying.

“You have to admit that it’s a staggering coincidence,” Jim said.

“I do. Again, I apologize.”

“Well. Thanks, dude. Again, wish we could help, but the third ticket is for Spock. Good luck.”

He took Bones under the arm and led him out of the room and into the corridor. Bones tried to wriggle away, but he kept him marching on.

“Are you actually mad? Why didn’t you tell him about our plan?”

“All he wants to do is go to Paris. Why give away a third of the reward?”

It wasn’t like he was trying to rob the poor greenhorn. If his improvised plan worked, and it would, Selek would get exactly what he wanted, and Jim would be able to finally live his life without depending on petty crimes or a job with no prospects at his family’s farm. Everyone would be perfectly satisfied.

“I’ll tell you, we’re walking away too soon.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry, unbeliever. I got it all under control. Alright, walk a little slower. Wait for it. Three, two, one…”

“Jim!”

He chuckled. “Right in the palm of our hand.”

“Jim, wait.”

He twirled around. “Did you call me?”

Selek was quickly heading down the corridor, holding his vest up so as not to trip on it. “If I don’t remember who I am, then who’s to say I’m not him?”

“Go on,” Jim urged him, suave.

“If I’m not him, then his grandmother will know right away. It will be an honest mistake.”

“But if you are him, then you’ll finally know who you are and have your family back. And either way, you’ll be in Paris.”

“He’s right,” Bones mumbled. “You better listen to him.”

“Alright.” Selek nodded.

“Alright?” Jim echoed with a grin.

“We have a deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyoo thanks to everyone who left kudos/commented!! I'll get around to reply to everyone eventually but know that your comments were very much appreciated. as usual, you can thank Ren for the wonderful art!

**Author's Note:**

> blease. leave kudos and comments we appreciate feedback thank you


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